Trackmania Turbo Review(2)

All the same while Trackmania Turbo is arguably the best Trackmania, there’s still a sense of a series that isn’t quite hitting its true potential. For a start, the problem with such a smorgasbord is that it’s a challenge to pack each individual dish with a distinctive flavour, and the longer you play Trackmania, the more the tracks start to blur into each other. You notice how elements are repeated from track to track, and fewer and fewer courses leave much of an impression.

When they do, it’s often for the wrong reasons. Even in the quite early stages, Turbo can be frustrating. Hit a ramp from the wrong direction, go too aggressively into a corner or even misread how narrow a gateway is and you end up flying off the road or into the scenery and – realistically – it’s curtains for that go. There is a checkpoint feature, but as this doesn’t reset your time there’s little reason to make use of it, particularly as a few seconds can mean the difference between bronze and silver or bronze and no medal at all. You might as well just go for the rapid one-button restart.

Most of the time you can see the obstacles coming, but every now and then a concealed turn or jump or even an obtrusive tree or rock can catch you out. Throw in the skittish handling of the Lagoon and Valley vehicles and the occasional abrupt shifts of point-of-view, and even relatively short races can cause you headaches. Unfortunately, someone at Nadeo decided that putting three-lap events in the fifth and tenth slots of every group was a good idea. If you thought blowing a sixty second challenge through one error was annoying, imagine how much more annoying it is when you’ve just thrown a three-lap effort.

Up to a point, the challenge of Trackmania’s levels is part of their appeal. You just know that if you go back in you can take off a few seconds, move up the regional and global leaderboards and even grab the next medal. Yet at times, it works against the game. If one track causes so much grief, do you really want to have another crack?

Still, a little frustration is par for the course in any time trial game, and it’s not like the Trials games have been short of infuriating difficulty spikes. Instead, what seems to hold Trackmania Turbo back is that it doesn’t seem to be moving the series on. It’s a highly polished and remastered greatest hits of a Trackmania rather than a new LP. There are changes – Double Driver, some new track elements – but nothing that makes you feel that you’re not playing anything that you haven’t played before. And when Trackmania emerged, it did feel new and exciting. The series needs a little of that spirit to return.

VerdictTrackmania: Turbo is a great Trackmania, crammed with all the ludicrous looping tracks and puzzlers that fans could as for, with enhanced visuals, stronger handling and a good selection of local and online modes. However, it can also be hideously frustrating, while there’s a sense that it doesn’t really push the series anywhere new. At the budget price it’s still a great buy both for fans and newbies, but it’s going to take a little more to craft Trackmania’s masterpiece.